travel never made a bore interesting; it only makes for a well-traveled bore, in the same way coffee makes for a wide-awake drunk. In fact, the more a bore travels, the worse he gets. The only advantage in it for his friends and family is that he isn't home as much.

Some people collect paperweights, or pre-Columbian figures, or old masters, or young mistresses, or tombstone rubbings, or five-minute recipes, or any of a thousand other things... My own collection is sunrises; and I find that they have their advantages. Sunrises are usually handsome, they can't possibly be dusted, and they take only a little room, so long as it has a window to see them from.

People would have more leisure time if it weren't for all the leisure-time activities that use it up.

This is your dividing line, by the way, between child and nonchild - when the first trouble happens that Mama can't fix.

When I finally gathered, invented, stole, simplified, borrowed, and found a publisher for a clutch of reasonably foolproof recipes, I learned I had friends I hadn't known about - more proof that a mutual dislike can be quite as sound a basis for friendship as a mutual devotion.

As millions of women have done before me, I pulled domesticity over my head like a blanket and found I was still cold.

Like a chastity belt, the package tour keeps you out of mischief but a bit restive for wondering what you missed.